借助AI, 研究人员可实现与动物交谈（1）

Have you ever wondered what songbirds are actually saying to each other with all of their chirping?

你们有没有琢磨过，鸟儿鸣叫时，它们到底在对彼此说什么?

Or what your cat could possibly be yowling about so early in the morning?

或者你的猫一大清早可能在号叫什么？

Well, powerful new technologies are helping researchers decode animal communication. And even begin to talk back to nonhumans.

嗯，强大的新技术正在帮助研究人员破译动物交流。甚至可以开始与非人类顶嘴。

Advanced sensors and artificial intelligence might have us at the brink of interspecies communication.

先进的传感器与人工智能可以让我们处于物种间交流的边缘。

Today, we're talking about how scientists are starting to communicate with creatures like bats and honeybees and how these conversations are forcing us to rethink our relationship with other species.

今天，我们将讨论科学家如何开始与蝙蝠、蜜蜂等生物交流，以及这些对话如何迫使我们重新思考我们与其他物种的关系。

I'm Kelso Harper, multimedia editor at Scientific American.

我是凯尔索·哈珀，《科学美国人》的多媒体编辑。

And I'm Sophie Bushwick, tech editor.

我是科技编辑索菲娅·布什维克。

You're listening to Science, Quickly. Hey, Sophie.

您正在收听的是《科学快播》。嘿, 索菲娅。

Hi, Kelso.

嗨, 凯尔索。

So you recently chatted with the author of a new book called, "The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology is Bringing us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants."

你最近和一本新书的作者聊了聊，这本书叫《生命之声:数字技术如何让我们深入动植物世界》。

Yeah, I had a great conversation with Karen Bakker, a professor at the University of British Columbia and a fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced study.

是的，我和凯伦·巴克聊得很愉快，她是不列颠哥伦比亚大学的教授，也是哈佛大学拉德克利夫高等研究院的研究员。

Her book explores how researchers are leveraging new tech to understand animal communication even in the burgeoning field of digital bioacoustics.

她的书探讨了研究人员如何利用新技术来理解动物交流，甚至利用了新兴的数字生物声学领域的技术。

Digital bioacoustics. Huh. So what does that actually look like? Are we trying to make animals talk like humans using translation collars like in the movie Up?

数字生物声学。嗯。那它到底是什么样的呢? 难道我们要像电影《飞屋环游记》那样，使用翻译项圈让动物像人类一样说话吗?

My name is Doug. My master made me this collar so that I may talk. Squirrel.

我叫道格。我的主人给我做了这个项圈，这样我就可以说话了。松鼠。

Not quite, but that is similar to how researchers first started trying to communicate with animals in the seventies and eighties, which is to say they attempted to teach the animals human language.

不完全是那样，不过，那与研究人员在七八十年代开始尝试与动物交流的方式相似，也就是说，他们试图教动物人类的语言。

But many scientists today have moved away from this human centric approach, and instead they want to understand animal communication on its own terms.

但是，今天的许多科学家已经放弃了这种以人类为中心的方法，相反，他们想从动物的角度来理解动物的交流。

So instead of trying to teach birds to speak English, we're deciphering what they're already saying to each other in birdish or birdese.

因此，我们不是试图教鸟儿讲英语，而是破译鸟儿彼此间用鸟语交谈的内容。

Right, exactly. This new field of digital bioacoustics uses portable field recorders that are like mini microphones you can put pretty much anywhere--in trees, on mountaintops, even on the backs of whales and birds.

对, 没错。这个新的数字生物声学领域使用便携式现场记录仪，就像微型麦克风一样，你可以将其放置在任何地方，大树上，山顶上，甚至鲸鱼和鸟儿的背上。